Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an integrated full bridge circuit, including four transistors divided into two series-connected pairs of transistors each forming a half bridge, the pairs of transistors are each connected to reference potential through a respective resistor element and to one of two separate supply terminals inside a housing through a respective other resistor element, and upstream driver transistors of a complementary type are each connected to the control terminal of a respective one of the transistors connected to the other resistor elements.
Such integrated full bridge circuits are by now well known. An integrated full bridge circuit which is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,989,114 has four transistors that are each connected to supply terminals through resistor elements disposed in the paths. The transistors of the upper bridge half each have an upstream driver transistor of the complementary type at their respective control terminals. A driver circuit for a bridge circuit which is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,639,794 has a driver transistor connected to the control terminals of two transistors of the bridge circuit that are triggered diagonally. Thus, two transistors of the bridge circuit are triggered with one driver transistor.
Other examples of integrated circuit components include, among others, the TLE 4203 (Siemens) and L9937 (SGS-Thomson Microelectronics). The integrated TLE 4203 component is discussed below with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2.
A problem of those known bridge circuits is the power loss that occurs during operation. Specifically, the power loss is responsible for the fact that the integrated circuits in which such full bridge circuits are found sometimes heat up considerably.